The Sample Lady at the grocery store and I have an understanding. As long as I don’t block traffic and stand around telling her dad jokes, she will look the other way as I take more than my fair share of samples:
“So, the police have released some details about that guy who fell to his death off the nightclub roof.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Apparently, not a bouncer.”
“Shut up and have some more pretzels.”
“Don’t mind if I do.”
Last week, the Sample Lady and I bonded over wedges of tangelo, which sounds like it could be the name of your aunt’s latest boyfriend with a pencil-thin mustache and too much gold jewelry but is actually a citrus hybrid of a tangerine and a grapefruit. It turns out that tangelos are insanely delicious — sweet and perfumy, but balanced with enough acidity to make them taste super-juicy.
One thing led to another and I ended up with a bag of them on my kitchen counter. I really, really thought about adapting a lemon cake recipe into a tangelo one, but curiosity got the better of me and I decided to see what fresh tangelo juice tasted like.
Even better.
For reasons known only to fruit geneticists and perhaps Pomona, the Roman goddess of oranges, tangelos, instead of taking after their large, grapefruity parent, are actually a bit smaller than standard run-of-the-mill tangerines and fit nicely into a lemon juicer. Place a fine-mesh strainer over a leftover plastic takeout container and squeeze five or six tangelos through it. The plastic container is flexible enough to allow you to squeeze the sides and pour juice neatly into a cocktail jigger.
Which leads us nicely to the topic of tangelo cocktails.
Two Tangelo Cocktails
#1 – A Beer-mosa
4 ounces fresh squeezed tangelo juice
12-ounce bottle of not-too-hoppy pale beer – a Mexican lager is great for this
This is very complicated, so pay close attention:
Pour the tangelo juice into a pint glass, and top it with beer.
Even though a tangelo looks like a pony in the tangerine stable and tastes really sweet and juicy on its own, there is something about a mild beer that calls to its grapefruit forebears and forges a bond. The slight bitterness of the beer clasps hands with the background bitterness of the tangelo juice and won’t let go. The beer tastes juicy, and the juice tastes even more refreshing, if that is possible.
While not as daintily sophisticated as a traditional mimosa, this might be my new brunch go-to.
#2 – Pencil-Thin Mustache
2 ounces vodka
½ ounce Aperol — a ruby-colored, slightly bitter liqueur made from rhubarb and miracles
½ ounce orange liqueur — in this particular case, dry orange curacao
3 ounces fresh squeezed tangelo juice
Combine all ingredients with ice in a cocktail shaker. Shake thoroughly.
Strain over fresh ice in a rocks glass. If you are prone to garnishes, a slice or twist of tangelo would not go amiss here.
It is hard to imagine any cocktail more orange than this one. It looks orange. It tastes orange. Not like oranges, mind you — tangelos and sunshine are the primary flavor profiles here. The Aperol and curacao add a bit of complexity, and the vodka hides in the background, but the fresh tangelo juice is the star here. Two or three of these could make porch-sitting an event.
I’m not entirely sure if there is an actual tangelo season, but it seems shortsighted not to drink a large number of each of these cocktails while the opportunity presents itself.
Featured Photo: Tangelo Madness. Photo by John Fladd.